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Rwanda


                                                                                     Uncomfortable Truths


            The Legacy of the Belgian Empire


            Summary

                   Belgians cannot solely be held responsible for the post-independent Rwanda
                   The motivation for Belgian involvement in Africa was that of their King Leopold II

                   Colonial administration of Rwanda and Burundi were continuations and extensions of how
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                    all m'zuŋ u, colonial powers acted
                   A combination of Divide & Rule and governance through an elite based on a single tribe
                   One of the features that singles out the Belgian Empire from that of other colonial powers is
                    the extent to which they codified ethnic identity into the framework of governance.
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                   Whilst the ordinary m'zuŋ u, not unreasonably so, focuses on the 'genocide', the greatest
                    legacy of the Belgian Empire has been the never ending chaos that inflicts the whole of the
                    region in which Rwanda is located.
                                                          *****
                  “ Of the Europeans who scrambled for control of Africa at the end of the 19th century,

                  Belgium's King Leopold II left arguably the largest and most horrid legacy of all.
                  While the Great Powers competed for territory elsewhere, the king of one of Europe's
                  smallest countries carved his own private colony out of 100km2 of the Central African

                  rainforest.
                  He claimed he was doing it to protect the "natives" from Arab slavers, and to open the

                  heart of Africa to Christian missionaries and Western capitalists.
                  Instead, as the makers of BBC Four documentary White King, Red Rubber, Black Death

                  powerfully argue, the king unleashed new horrors on the African continent.
                                                          *****
                  He turned his "Congo Free State" into a massive labour camp, made a fortune for himself
                  from the harvest of its wild rubber, and contributed in a large way to the death of perhaps
                  10 million innocent people.

                  What is now called the Democratic Republic of Congo has clearly never recovered.
                  "Legalized robbery enforced by violence", as Leopold's reign was described at the time,

                  has remained, more or less, the template by which Congo's rulers have governed ever
                  since. “

                                                                 "King Leopold's Legacy of DR Congo Violence."    112
                                                                                    BBC NEWS (February 2004)
                                                   ***** ***** *****
                  “ The best-known chapters of Belgium's colonial past are the beginning and end: the

                  cruelty and greed of Leopold II and the assassination of Lumumba. Less known is
                  colonial life, from when the Belgian state took over in 1908 to the hasty passage of
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